WELCOME !

Digital to analog Conversion : What is that ?

Digital to analog conversion is used in many things,
Like a speaker which is an analog output.
The computer is playing a song stored in a .mp3 format or something else which is digital information.
Then this information needs to be converted to analog in order to the speaker to play.
And this is what we are going to see today !

Digital to analog Conversion : How does it work ?

First, we will choose what is the digital value that we want to convert to analog.
For example, D_val = 48
Then, we need to know what will be the voltage range we can work on.
For example, from 0 V to 5 V so,
V_min = 0 V ; V_max = 5 V ; V_ref = 5 - 0 = 5 V
We need to know what will be the DAC's resolution, let's say it is 8 bit.
With the resolution, (N_res = 8) we can find the Quantum :
Q = V_ref / (2^N_res - 1)
Q = 5 / (2⁸ - 1) = 0.0196 V = 19.6 mV
But wait ... what is the Quantum ?
The Quantum will be the most little variation between a value.
Since our resolution is 8 bit, we can only choose a value between 0 and 255.
Why 255 ? Because 2⁸ - 1 = 255 as we saw earlier.
Now, it is time to convert our value to analog which was 48.
The output voltage of 48 would be in this case :
V_out = Q x D_val + V_min
V_out = 0.0196 x 48 + 0 = 0.9408 V
That's it ! We just saw how to convert a digital value to an analog value.

Digital to analog Conversion : Converter